Jumat, 15 Juli 2016

3 New Outreach Realities Your Plant Needs to Know

3 New Outreach Realities Your Plant Needs to Know

By James Emery White
One of the easiest mistakes to fall into is “strategy
rut.” Meaning you embrace a certain strategy during its anointed heyday
but then fail to keep abreast of how the Holy Spirit seems to be
anointing different strategies now. There is a simple truth about
strategy: It’s not permanent. Doctrines, values and mission are eternal,
but not methods or strategies. These must be continually and ruthlessly
evaluated in light of a rapidly-changing and increasingly settled
post-Christian culture.
So why aren’t they?
Two reasons seem to be most responsible. First, we tend to stay with
what we know and what we’re comfortable with. If you grew up using bus
ministries, Sunday School, revivals and door-to-door visitation for your
outreach, you can be prone to stick with them. But second, and more
problematic, is when we tend to elevate certain strategies to the
“doctrinal” level, like treating door-to-door visitation as the supreme
barometer for evangelistic presence.
The truth is that methods and strategies must change. Here are three
big changes—among many that have taken place in outreach over the last
twenty years—that many churches still don’t get.1. “Big Day” outreach still works, but the “big days” have changed.
A “big day” approach to outreach is simple: Seize the naturally big
days in terms of cultural attendance, do all you can to reach out and
invite people to attend, and do all you can to “hook” them so they will
keep attending afterward.
Traditionally the two big days were Easter and Mother’s Day. The
rationale behind this was that Easter was the one day everybody would
still go to church, and Mother’s Day was the one day that Mom (often the
only churchgoer in the family) would get her way with the rest of the
clan.
A “big day” approach is still effective. The problem is that many
churches haven’t updated their cultural calendar. How so? The biggest
days don’t tend to be Easter or Mother’s Day anymore.
In regard to Easter, there just isn’t the cultural impetus to attend
that once existed. Further, Easter is now tied to “spring break” on
almost every public school and college calendar, making it one of the
biggest vacation weekends of the year. There are actually healthy
churches starting to dip in attendance on Easter!
As for Mother’s Day, again, moms these days are as unchurched as
anyone. Further, families are so spread out geographically that this
just isn’t the “big day” it used to be.
What days are? Services surrounding Christmas Eve, the fall
time-change weekend and then the first weekend following the start of
school (either in August or September). For example, for the past
several years at Meck, we’ve consistently had more people at our
Christmas Eve services than our Easter weekend services. And the spike
in attendance for the weekend closest to the start of the new school
year is one of the biggest spikes we experience.
In talking with other church leaders, we are far from alone.2. Don’t waste money on direct mail.
If you wanted to start a church, grow a church, or market a church in
the 1980s and 1990s, direct mail was your way. It was relatively cheap
and, most of all, effective. It was often said that if you mailed out
20,000 mailers, you could anticipate a 1 percent to 2.5 percent return.
That’s between 200 and 500 people.
That was worth a stamp.
Not anymore, and that’s true for both fronts: meaning, it’s not cheap
and it’s not that effective. The best mailers are targeted to previous
attenders, new households, specific areas surrounding your church and
all to a personalized “name.” Translation: expensive. The results of
mass, shotgun types of mailings that fall out of such categories is
almost non-existent.
Whether it’s the devaluation of surface mail itself, the inundation
of junk mail, the fact that so many churches used it in the past, the
shift to electronic communication, or (most likely) the need for
something far more personal and relational to move the typical
unchurched person in today’s world, mailboxes don’t translate into
attendance.Sidenote: And if you do send something out, please think it
through. Most advertise contemporary music, coffee and casual dress. Or
put the pastor’s face on the page. Really? That’s what will get an
unchurched person to attend? They already have contemporary music,
coffee and the ability to dress casually. Such things reflect an ’80s
mentality, back when boomers were actively looking for a church. That
world no longer exists.
So what does work?
Social media, social media, social media. Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat…the list goes on and on. If you are going
to use mass marketing, be savvy and use online formats such as Pandora
radio or other such platforms.3. The assumptions behind all things “seeker” are outdated.
For the last few decades, the key word in most conversations about
evangelism and church growth has been the word “seeker.” As in “seeker
churches,” being “seeker-targeted” in strategy, talking about reaching
“seekers,” or what a “seeker” might think about our service. Let’s not
forget the widespread embrace of being “seeker-driven” and
“seeker-sensitive.”
All things “seeker” came on to the scene during the late ’70s, and
was vibrant until the mid-’90s. It is now irrelevant at best and
terribly misleading at worst. The term “seeker” was used to refer in a
general way to the unchurched who were turned off to church but open to
both spirituality and religion. Think back to the flood of baby boomers
wanting to find a church for their kids but feeling freedom from the
religious and denominational moorings of their youth. They weren’t
rejecting religion, per se, they just felt the freedom to explore other
traditions. For example, consider the number of Catholics who explored
non-denominational evangelical megachurches. These were people who were
truly “seeking”—open to exploring the Christian faith for their life and
often in active search-mode for a religious faith (and even home) in
order to plant themselves. They had rejected the religion of their
upbringing (often Catholicism), not religion itself.
But the current challenge to Christianity does not come from other
religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion. These
people are not thinking about religion and rejecting it; they’re not
thinking about it at all.
So much for seeking.
According to the Baylor University Religion Survey, 44 percent of
respondents said they spend no time seeking “eternal wisdom.” And 46
percent told Lifeway Research they never wonder whether they will go to
heaven. So when it comes to matters related to God, religion or even
atheism, millions simply shrug their shoulders and ask, “So what?”
Many are now using the term “explorers” to define their target. Yes,
this is better than “seeker.” But the point is that people are starting
in a different place than they were even 15 years ago.
To be sure, the overarching idea behind all things “seeker” is still
valid; meaning, we should have both a strong sensitivity toward the
unchurched who have been invited to attend, as well as an objective to
make the “front door” of the church as open to them as possible. This is
not new; it goes back to Paul’s advice to the Corinthian church in the
New Testament (I Cor. 14). But what that means today is different than
what it meant even five years ago and again, is a strategy that must
continually be evaluated. The value is to be oriented toward the
unchurched—so yes, explorer-sensitive—but the method for doing that is
in constant flux.
The point is that assuming they are seeking, and creating services
for active search-mode, is not the most culturally targeted approach to
outreach. Services should be more sensitive to those who are illiterate
and skeptical, possibly exploring and open, than those in active
search-mode.
Of course, these are just three of the more common changes, chosen
because so many churches are still using “big day” approaches on non
“big days,” spending thousands on direct mail with scant results, and
assuming the ’90s approach to seeker-services is still in the vanguard
of cutting-edge outreach when….
…it’s not the ’90s.

James
Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community
Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology
and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also
served as their fourth president. His book, The Rise of the Nones:
Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, is available on Amazon. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit ChurchAndCulture.org,
where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church
and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on Twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.